6 Proven Ways To Increase Empowerment In Your Team

Every manager wants to infuse empowerment within their team members. A few weeks ago, I was sitting at a restaurant watching waiters step around some food that was spilled on the floor. This went on for almost 10 minutes before the restaurant manager came out with a mop and bucket to clean up the spill. I am fairly certain that cleaning the floors is not part of the restaurant manager’s job description.

The incident reminded me of having dinner with my family when we had teenagers. As soon as they would finish their meals, they would excuse themselves and exit quickly from the dining room only to hear their mother say, “Pick up your dishes!”

Learn more about Zenger Folkman’s Trifecta of Trust Team Experience. 

Increase Empowerment in Your Team

As a manager, do you sometimes feel like your employees are acting like teenagers? They focus on their part of the job, but rarely identify the work around the edges or the messes that need to be cleaned up. What can you do to create more empowerment and accountability in your team so that team members move from talking about their work, their job, and their goals to our work, our project and our objectives? What can you do to help avoid the never-ending excuse-making when deadlines are missed and to have an employee acknowledge, “I missed the deadline; it’s all on me!” Having employees who feel accountable and empowered creates a much more pleasant and productive workplace.

To confirm the impact of empowerment, I looked at data from more than 7,000 employees where we measured empowerment, along with employee engagement. Employees who felt a low level of empowerment were rated with engagement at the 24th percentile, whereas those with a high level of empowerment were at the 79th percentile. Clearly, empowerment counts.

What Creates Empowerment In A Team?

To answer that question, I looked at data from three different organizations comprising approximately 19,000 employees. I identified the items most strongly correlated with empowerment and then factor-analyzed the data to identify the six factors that were common across the three organizations.

1. Openness To New Ideas. When a work group manager was open about new ideas and opinions from team members, empowerment was significantly better. When employees come forward with new ideas, the thing that people often hear from their manager is either, “If I wanted your opinion, I would have asked for it,” or “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will take that under consideration.” The first response is simply expressing, “We don’t want or value your opinion.” The second is when managers pretend to care and listen but never do anything with your ideas. Both behaviors discourage empowerment. People will sometimes have excellent ideas and other times will have stupid ideas. Either way, taking the time to listen respectfully sends the message that people are valued and respected. Being open and inviting ideas from others will increase empowerment in your team.
2. Developing Others. If your employees never have good ideas, they may lack knowledge, skills, expertise, or experience. These people need to develop new skills. There is a very strong correlation between the emphasis a team has on development and high empowerment. Developing team members sends a message that employees are valued and the organization is willing to invest in them as people.
3. Supportive And Trusted Manager. The skill of a manager to gain the respect and support of the team members was another critical factor. If employees trusted their manager and felt the manager “had their back” and would support them, employees were more likely to feel empowered. We also found that when managers were effective in two-way communication and willing to make changes, these skills generated greater empowerment. Empowerment requires extra effort and energy from employees. When there is a low level of trust in a team leader, employees resist empowerment.
4. Recognition, Rewards And Encouragement. Those things that are rewarded are repeated. Empowerment requires team members to make some effort and take some risks. Those leaders who recognize and encourage employees when they see extra effort or risk-taking get more of that behavior in the future. Leaders who were effective at showing appreciation had higher empowerment scores. Some teams are a recognition desert. I have often asked groups if anyone recognizes team members too often or show too much appreciation. Most people managers don’t recognize and reward others often enough.
5. Positive Work Environment. When the work environment was positive, where people felt valued and respected, empowerment was higher. When the work environment was full of conflict, where everything was a crisis, and there was a lot of finger-pointing or blaming, empowerment was much lower. Most everyone can identify a negative work environment versus a positive environment. Leaders need to bring a positive attitude to work and a desire to create a great working environment.
6. Giving Team Members Authority. When a team member has the authority to make a decision, they feel more empowered. If they make a decision that gets reversed by their manager, the empowerment dissipates. Leaders need to make sure that employees are skilled and knowledgeable enough to make good decisions before they are given authority. The more control people have over their work and how it is done, the higher their sense of empowerment.

Empowerment impacts the engagement of the team, but it also impacts productivity. A study from Zenger Folkman found that only 4% of employees are willing to give extra effort when empowerment is low, but 67% are willing when empowerment is high. The discretionary effort of employees (willingness of employees to give extra effort) has a significant impact on productivity. As a leader, the other major benefit of having a highly empowered team is that you get to work with a group of satisfied people who are willing to work hard. It’s the best of all outcomes. Who wouldn’t want to strive for this goal?

-Joe Folkman